Victory in Jesus

Because of our time limitations last week, we didn’t look as closely at the text I chose for my message in the second chapter of Colossians. So, let’s return to that text today. To maintain context, here is the whole section I cited last week.

 

Colossians 2:1ff Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority; 

 

and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.  When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.

 

Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day, things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God. If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)—in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.

 

I think it will be helpful to summarize what we have already seen in this text last over the past two weeks: 1) Be firmly rooted and built up in Christ. 2) Be alert that you are not taken captive by ungodly and false philosophies about God and biblical morality. 3) Hold fast to the biblical truth that all the fullness of God dwells in Christ.

 

One of the heresies circulating around the churches in Colossae was the demonic-inspired doctrine that Christ alone was not sufficient for salvation. They taught that the Christian needs additional mediators – even angelic mediators. They said Christians also need the secret knowledge available to only a few chosen spokesmen for God, and that they need to add legalistic practices to their faith to be saved.

 

Of course, all the New Testament writers loudly condemned those heresies. And they should be loudly condemned today as well. Christians are ‘complete’ because – and only because – they are joined to Christ by faith. Their righteousness, their justification, their forgiveness and their full acceptance before God are all theirs through that union.

 

Think for a while about what that means for YOU, who, because of your repentant heart, are now joined with God the Son. It means you are fully accepted by God because you belong to God incarnate. You don’t have to DO anything more to be accepted by the Father who loves you so much that He gave His Son to be YOUR propitiatory sacrifice – our atoning sacrifice that satisfied God’s righteous wrath against our sins. Listen to St John describe it: “And this is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins." (1 John 4:10)

 

The Christian is fully complete in Christ. There is nothing else we can do to make us more acceptable to God. Listen again as Paul continues in today’s text: “If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!”  . . . in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.” (verses 20-23)

We could live alone in a cave and still actively live in sin. Adhering to various Dos and Don’ts are of no value against the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. And why is that? Because of our sin NATURE. Although sin no longer reigns in the life of a Christian, sin nevertheless remains in the Christian and will continue to remain until we are no longer in our body. And while that uncomfortable truth can send us toward depression and the temptation to give up the fight, we should always remember St Paul’s agonized cry in the last part of Romans 7:

 

“For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?”  Romans 7:18-24

 

Who will set him free? Who will set US free? Paul answers his own question, and I will get to it in a moment, but first, please hear this: There not a Christian in all history who has striven to serve God and has not at the same time also known the experience Paul wrote about. And that is why his answer to his own question has been a glorious encouragement to every Christian who has struggled against their own sin nature:

 

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1-4)

 

We do not need to hold strict adherence to a list of Dos and Don’ts in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men to make us acceptable to God. We only need obedient faith, trust, bold confidence in what He has done for us in Christ and to live in obedience to His commandments that results from our faith.

 

Paul then continues his instruction to the Colossians – and the those at Ashwood Meadows in verses 11-15 – “And in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.  When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.

 

Circumcision not only brought the child into God’s covenant relationship with God, but circumcision was always meant by God to be more than the removal of a piece of flesh. He intended it as a symbol of the removal of evil from the heart. Listen to Him speak through Moses: (Deuteronomy 10:16) “So circumcise your heart and stiffen your neck no longer.”

 

And, again in Deuteronomy 30:6 “Moreover the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.”

 

Now, listen to God through Jeremiah nearly 1000 years later (Jeremiah 4:4) “Circumcise yourselves to the Lord and remove the foreskins of your hear . . . or else My wrath will go forth like fire and burn with none to quench it, because of the evil of your deeds.”

 

So, when the apostle Paul continues in the next clause: “Having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead,” we ought to humbly ask ourselves what is the use of being baptized if we do not seek the Lord in obedience? Isn’t that what John the Baptist declared to those coming to the Jordan? “Therefore, bear fruit in keeping with repentance; and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.” (Matthew 3:8-9)

 

In other words, without living a life of repentance, circumcision becomes uncircumcision – as Paul wrote to the Christians at Rome: “For indeed circumcision is of value if you practice the Law; but if you are a transgressor of the Law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision.” (Romans 2:25)

 

And I think it is equally true, without living a life of repentance, baptism becomes unbaptism.

 

Paul continues in today’s text: “ When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

 

I’ve heard it preached that after the Fall we are diamonds but covered with mud. They say Jesus’ blood cleans off the mud. Where pastors get such erroneous ideas demonstrates either their biblical illiteracy, or their disbelief in the inerrancy, infallibility, and full inspiration of God’s word.

 

God threatened our first parents with spiritual death – a broken fellowship with God – if they ate of the forbidden tree: “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)

 

St Paul understood the Genesis text to mean exactly as it is written, which is why he told the Ephesians they were dead – the word he used is the same we use for ‘necrotic’ – they (and you and I) were dead in their sins – until God, by His grace, made them (and us) alive.

 

When we were ‘born again’ God forgave all – all – our sins, having canceled out each one, having stamped on the ledger the equivalent of our ‘Paid in Full’ stamped on a financial debt we no longer owe. As the songwriter aptly described it: “He paid a debt He did not owe, I owed a debt I could not pay, I needed someone to wash my sins away; And now I sing a brand-new song, “Amazing Grace,” Christ Jesus paid a debt that I could never pay.”

 

And that surely is why the apostle continued his jubilant exultation: “When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.”

 

When Paul wrote that Jesus triumphed over the powers by the cross, he wasn’t talking about the powers of Rome. He was speaking about the same powers of the air that he speaks in his letter to the church at Ephesus: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12)

 

On Calvary’s cross, Jesus triumphed specifically over all supernatural demonic powers in all the unseen realms around us. That’s also why Paul tells us in his letter to the Philippians: “At the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:10-11)

 

Every knee. Every tongue. In heaven and on earth and under the earth. And that is all because of what God did on the cross when Jesus gave Himself as a sin offering for all who come to Him by faith. And because of the death of God-Incarnate, you and I who are IN CHRIST have victory (present tense) victory over sin, death, and the devil.

 

Victory over sin: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” Romans 8:1-4

 

Victory over death: (1 Corinthians 15:51-57) “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.  For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Victory over the devil: “Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7) Romans 16:20 “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.”

 

Christian, it’s because of our obedient faith in the substitutionary atonement of Christ that the spiritual armor Paul wrote of in Ephesians six is efficacious for the Christian: The helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the belt of truth, the sword of the Spirit, and the rest of the supernatural armor.

 

In HIM we are complete. We need nothing else to enter that place where, as Isaiah tells us, “He will swallow up death for all time, and the Lord God will wipe tears away from all faces . . . And it will be said in that day, “Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.” (Isaiah 25:8-9)

 

Well, we’ve run out of time again. Let’s stop here and return to chapter three next time. But for now, to reiterate what I hoped to make clear during this message:

 

First: We need nothing else to add to the atoning death of the Son of God on our behalf. No rules, no sacraments, no visions, no other mediators. Jesus, God incarnate, is fully sufficient for our eternal salvation.

 

Second point: Unless our hearts are changed, neither circumcision nor baptism mean anything of eternal value.

 

Third: In Christ alone the Christian has victory over sin, death, and the devil. The armor of God is overwhelmingly sufficient defense against our supernatural enemy. Therefore, be careful to wear that armor every day.

 

We will continue our study through Colossians next time.